Last Call

How Ann Coulter remains on television as a "serious pundit" baffles me when she's allowed to say nonsense like this:

Former Clinton Labor secretary Robert Reich argued that Romney has failed to appeal to Latinos on key immigration issues, from calling for self-deportation to threatening to veto the DREAM Act.

“We have Governor Romney who is basically taking a position that is anti a large and the fastest growing segment of the electorate,” Reich said on the “This Week” roundtable.

While criticizing President Obama for failing to aggressively pursue immigration reform in his first term, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos said that “if Republicans don’t do something with immigration … they’re going to lose not only this election, they might lose the White House for a generation.”

Coulter quickly interjected, “That’s why the Democrats are dropping the blacks and moving on to the Hispanics, because they’re a larger group of Hispanics now” — seeming to claim that Democrats are more aggressively courting the growing Latino population than the African American vote, which polls show is firmly behind President Obama.

Coulter, author of the new book “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama,” also argued that groups on the left, from feminists to gay rights groups to those defending immigrants, have commandeered the black civil rights experience.

Coulter could give a damn about the "black civil rights experience" but if she can start a race war between African-American voters and Latino voters or LGBTQ voters or all of the above, the GOP united in its hatred of all three groups wins, doesn't it?  Seems a pretty obvious strategy to me.  Question is why she's allowed away from the FOX Noise kid's table.

If Coulter had an ounce of common sense, she'd realize that civil rights transcends the black experience and must be applied to all minority groups, which is what everyone from Dr. King to Rep. John Lewis today is still fighting for.  Republicans may be partial to "I got mine, screw you" as a strategy, but all that has done is increasingly driven the Latino vote into the hands of a black President.

She realizes that of course, which is why we're seeing this boulder-fisted attempt to break up the coalition of Dem voters with squabbling and infighting.  It's not working, of course...because as concern troll Ann here admits, African-American voters like myself really are smart enough to see what's going on here.

Cows Eating Cake, GOP Impressed That Someone Got Their Message

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Mike Yoder's herd of dairy cattle are living the sweet life. With corn feed scarcer and costlier than ever, Yoder increasingly is looking for cheaper alternatives -- and this summer he found a good deal on ice cream sprinkles.

"It's a pretty colorful load," said Yoder, who operates about 450 dairy cows on his farm in northern Indiana. "Anything that keeps the feed costs down."

As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year's U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed.

In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.

So, just like poor families, cows are eating junk food because it is cheaper and in better supply than grain products.  The drought isn't easing up, in fact it may get worse next year.  Healthy foods will become harder to obtain, while gummy bears and sprinkles are everywhere.

Bitterness aside, I am very glad to see less food waste and a creative solution keep the cows alive and families eating.  In certain amounts there is nothing wrong with this, as long as owners supplement the diet and make sure it doesn't shift too far towards an all-sugar diet.

It's an interesting solution, and it will be further interesting to see what, if any, results it has on the animals or the meat product.  In the meantime, if it's good enough for Bessie, I guess it's good enough for me.

Scott Peterson Doing Just Great In Prison

Joking with others, shooting hoops and scoring baskets – to look at Scott Peterson, one would hardly imagine he's incarcerated on San Quentin's Death Row. 

And yet, that is how journalist Nancy Mullane found the former fertilizer salesman when she visited the California state penitentiary where Peterson is confined to a solitary 7-by-9-ft. cell for the Christmas Eve 2002 killings of his wife Laci and their unborn son, and then dumping their remains into San Francisco Bay. 

"He didn’t look depressed. He looked like someone you'd see on the street playing basketball. He had his shirt off and his boxer shorts up," says Mullane, who was given an unprecedented level of media access to the prison for her book about the rehabilitation of condemned killers, Life After Murder: Five Men In Search of Redemption. "He wasn't ripped, but he looked healthy." 

You know who isn't ripped and healthy?  His wife and unborn child.  You know, the folks he threw in a trash bag to wash up on the shore.

With the exception of a gullible few, the entire world came to learn that this man committed murder.  Even those who truly did not want to believe that a man could kill his unborn baby, even the people who were too racist of classist to believe that someone "of his means" could stoop so low, those people came to learn it too.  If you don't believe that was a topic, check crime message boards of the day.  I remember being appalled that the reason some people refused to believe his guilt was because he was white and well off.

Our disgraceful fertilizer salesman who sold one load too many is in prison, but he's got his life, for now and for several years.  Which is more than his wife and unborn son were given.

And now I will utter a phrase that I never thought would pass my lips: this story doesn't include nearly enough brutal prison scenes to satisfy me.

Florida Cop Amused By Trayvon Martin's Skittle Purchase

Nobody is perfect. I have a tendency to insert a giggle when I don't mean one.  Primarily because I'm a happy person, but it's also a verbal tic that I have fought since junior high.  So when I saw this story, I was skeptical.   Was this cop amused, or just unsure of how to proceed and made the wrong sound?

Listen for yourself.  The Smoking Gun was kind enough to put it up for us to hear.

The Smoking Gun plays the audio, and there is no quick giggle-sound.  There is "hahahaha" laughing about this man being the one who sold the "famous Skittles" to Martin.  By a policeman who should have been showing the proper gravity for the death of a young man under suspicious circumstances.  A policeman who had no reason to be making light of why he was speaking with the clerk in the first place.

During the interview, the clerk was asked about the sale of the "famous Skittles" by an investigator named David, who chuckled upon finishing his question. The question was met by laughs by several other individuals present for the interview (a group that included two of the clerk’s family members and a second investigator). The 7-Eleven clerk, however, apparently was not among the group chortling.

That's because the clerk has more class and good taste than a freaking cop.

I'm pissed off all over again.

When All Other Answers Fail

Perhaps you should look at the obvious one.

Instead of eating in ways that stress our body, we should eat in ways that are healthy.  Our diet-obsessed culture has spawned eating disorders and new and exciting health problems because it relies too heavily on what we don't eat.  It escalates it to delicious forbidden fruit as well as deprives us of a diverse diet.

Here is a really good article about looking at food from a healthy perspective, not just trying to lose weight.  It sums up something my physical therapist told me once.  If you eat like a 200 pound person, you will be a 200 pound person.  If you eat like a 150 pound person, your body will follow suit.  Then he asked me why I was working so hard to maintain my then 275 pound status, and I realized that's what I was doing.  I was actually putting effort into keeping my body the way I hated it.  Now I have a healthy relationship with fruits, vegetables, and working different foods into my diet.  I have a healthy relationship with my body too, and have seen amazing improvements in my diabetes and blood pressure.

This article is dead on.  Being thin and being healthy are not necessarily related.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that as long as you lose weight, it doesn’t matter what you eat. But it does. Yet being thin and being healthy are not at all the same thing. Being overweight is not necessarily linked with disease or premature death. What you eat affects which diseases you may develop, regardless of whether you’re thin or fat. Some diets that may help you lose weight may be harmful to your health over time.

A widely publicized study earlier this year showed that a low-carb Atkins-type diet might be a faster way to lose weight. That may have given many people the idea that eating meat and butter is the route to thinness and thus health.

You People Have Done It Again

Well now You People have done it.  Queen Anne Romney doesn't want to talk to You People anymore because You People hurt her feelings.  Don't you know how hard it is to have $250,000,000 and multiple homes across the country?  You People are heartless.

In Omaha for a closed to the press fundraiser for her husband Friday, Mrs. Romney was supposed to give interviews to several reporters but canceled due to the controversy over her blow up at Republicans on a radio interview, in which she ordered Mitt’s Republican critics to “stop it.”

Omaha.com reported:

She had scheduled interviews with The World-Herald and other reporters but canceled after controversy erupted this week over her comments to a public radio station in Iowa about her husband’s Republican critics.

She appeared at the luncheon, $250-per-plate fundraiser at the Embassy Suites and La Vista Conference Center. The event was closed to reporters.

Looks like Ann is being taken off the shelf.  America's no longer in love with Her Imperial Highness, it seems.  Can you imagine how Michelle Obama would be treated if she made those statements and later canceled a presser with reporters?

Sorry Ann.  You chose to play this game.  Hire a body double or something.  You have the money.

Not As Seismic As You Think

On 60 Minutes last night, President Obama admitted that while gridlock and obstruction by the GOP has harmed the country, the voters rightfully believe that he ultimately "bears responsibility" for the government.

President Barack Obama discussed his frustration with gridlock in Washington, saying his "biggest disappointment" in his nearly four years in office has been the failure to oversee change in the nation's political climate.

"My biggest disappointment is that we haven't changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked," Obama said in a CBS News interview that aired Sunday.

Difficult when Republican leaders were meeting during the day of the President's inauguration to try to figure out how to completely oppose him and shut the country down for the four years.

Asked if he bears any blame for the stalemate, Obama said the buck stops at his desk.

"I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree," he said on CBS' "60 Minutes."

That's a pretty bold statement, but he's said it before that the President bears responsibility, especially during an election year.  It's what a President and a leader should say.  Compare that to Mitt Romney, avoiding responsibility for MassCare when he was governor, and refusing to give specifics of his austerity plan now.

Smart move.  Republicans had better be careful pursuing this as an attack...it's an obvious rope-a-dope, but then again the Romney camp hasn't shown the strategic intelligence to not take Obama's bait every single time.

I doubt this time will be different.

StupidiNews!

• Search and rescue teams in Nepal are looking for survivors of a deadly avalanche on the Himalayan peak of Manaslu.
• A group of nearly a thousand pastors plan to openly defy the IRS and tell their congregations to support Mitt Romney. 
• Syrian rebel group are united in their opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but can agree on little else.
• UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg admits that the UK can tax capital gains more on the top 10% of earners in order to raise revenues.
• Researchers have made headway on "reading and writing" data on quantum spin on phosphorus atoms.